Time for Rest and Relaxation

Working hard is a good thing but if you don't take an occasional break, you can lose focus and motivation. I'll be scaling things back over the next week and spending some much needed time with family and friends.

I might post a list or two of alternative TLD's during that time, but I don't expect to be digging for any new .com or .net domain names until I crank things back up around June 20th.

Friday, June 12th is the last day for DomainMassDevelopment.com's 50% off offer. I ordered 15 sites last week and they were uploaded late last evening. I've had very little time to review them but they made a good first impression on me. Plenty of quality photos, videos and targeted unique content sprinkled throughout. The sites are very clean and you'll notice a complete absense of advertising at this point. I want to let the sites age a little and get properly indexed before I begin monetizing them or adding additional content.

Below is a link to the first site. You can view the whole network of sites using the left hand sidebar on the site below.

Big Sur Hotels

I really like the themed network concept and I cannot argue with the price. I cannot even guess how long it would have taken me to build these sites but I do know I wouldn't have been willing to do it for the price they did it for. There's only a few hours left on the 50% off offer.

Visit Domain Mass Development

The email newsletter containing additional available domain names will be back next weekend. If you haven't joined yet, why not? It's absolutely FREE and you can unsubscribe at any time.

The Importance of Trust in Business and the Domain Industry

The following guest article was written by Philip O'Neil, owner and editor of LLLL.com

TRUST

My name is Philip O’Neil. I started learning about the domain name industry around 5 years ago. One of my first experiences with domain names was to visit a domain and saw nothing on the site. I contacted the owner who asked for $1000. It seemed a lot at the time but in retrospect, it would have been a good buy. I talked with other people who would have been affected by the purchase. We wondered who this person was. Was this somebody who knew us and knew that we would pay this much? Was this somebody thousands of kilometers who took a punt when buying this domain? Who was this seller? Where was this seller? Why did this seller justify pricing the domain at $1000?

One thing was for sure. We did not trust the seller and based on discussions with the seller, he (she?) did not trust us. The deal did not go through and I settled on buying a name for registration fee. The idea of giving money to another person and waiting for them to give us a domain was way too scary.

Building trust is one of the most important parts of business. The domain name industry is dependent on trust to operate effectively. My experience has been that those who trust you will always pay more than those who don’t. Below are elements of trust that I believe all domain name professionals need to understand.

HONESTY

Trust and honesty go hand in hand. Often people will short change themselves by being dishonest over small things. When the big opportunities come around for them in life, they lose it because they didn’t earn trust with the small opportunities. They often feel sorry for themselves and angry that they miss out on great opportunities but the reality is that they have the opportunities and throw them away over small things. Never underestimate the opportunities that are in front of you!

The money making deals are often preceded by a smaller trust building small deal. I have seen this happen with my business many times and made thousands in sales after a small trust building deal!

RELATIONSHIPS

The biggest mistake in business is the danger of thinking that business is all about money. It is not! It is all about relationships. The more people get distracted away from relationships and focused on money, the more they send out the subtle message “I do not care about anyone but myself”. Studies have been done to show that businesses that solely operate to get the most money possible adopt characteristics that psychologists commonly associate with the characteristics of a psychopath. Always remember that you are dealing with humans, not dollars when you want to perform business as nobody likes dealing with psychopaths.

RISK

The more somebody trusts you, the higher the risk they will be willing to take. $100 is a high risk for a poor individual but $2000 a low risk for a wealthy individual. When dealing with domains, you usually don’t know who you are dealing with. Get to know your clients and when you have had made a sale with them, try to think of some way of keeping the communication open with them to learn more about them and also to attract more potential business.

Selling to established customers is usually easier than selling to new customers. My experience with domain sales is that you often have only one opportunity to leave a lasting thought in your clients head. Carefully plan what this thought is going to be or you will lose the opportunity for future business. Examples include a survey question, a mailing list, an invitation for further business, an invitation to visit a website, etc…

If you can afford to, take a risk with some customers. Taking risks builds trust.

TIME

It often takes years to build trust but seconds to destroy it. Patience is a key part of domain name trading. One customer may take minutes to trust you while another takes years. Often it looks like a new business has become popular from nowhere but in reality it has been around for more than ten years. If you think of performers like Kylie Minogue and John Travolta, they are respected because they kept performing in the hard years before attracting the mass markets with “I’m spinning around” and Pulp Fiction.

Look for ways to help your customers trust you quicker. This will improve the speed of trust and develop more business for you. Examples include using escrow, online trader ratings and testimonies.

DIPLOMACY

Keeping your mouth shut when somebody upsets you is usually the smart thing to do. Everybody usually upsets everyone eventually. Sometimes people upset you because they are right and you aren’t. Other times they are just saying stupid things. Diplomacy is not about being a doormat but about carefully picking the right times to fight.

BEING ORGANIZED

If you are disorganized, you can’t afford to make many promises as you don’t know if you can keep them. In addition to this, there are certain standards that people will expect of you that are considered unspoken promises when dealing with customers. Less is often more in business. Work out how to deliver to customers what they expect and don’t give them the impression that you can provide services you can’t or you will find it very difficult to succeed.

BRANDING

What has branding got to do with trust? People don’t trust you if they don’t remember you. Good branding is essential to building trust. They say that most people don’t buy from you until they have seen at least 7 advertisements.

CONFIDENTIALITY

A simple concept people should understand is:

The wealthy protect their assets while the poor have very little to protect.

Confidentiality is a key part of domain name trading as confidentiality reduces the potential expenses related to protecting assets for your clients. Some people love to boast about their purchases and their collections. However, the common financial advice that wealthy domain owners receive is to keep their cards close to their chest. Excluding people from working with you by not respecting their confidentiality can cost you your best customers. A business deal is usually between 2 people, not the whole world.

SURPRISE

Here is a trick I have learned. Surprising people is a brilliant way to generate business. Give people more than they expect or give to people when they don’t expect it. I have used this trick and generated thousands in sales. In relationships I find that you can give somebody a small $2 gift when they don’t expect it and this will often be more valuable than spending an extra $10 on a birthday present as the surprise element adds more value to the relationship. If you think of ways to creatively surprise your customers and give them a little more than they thought they were going to get then you may be surprised at the additional business that comes your way.

LAST NOTE

I hope you find this article useful. I am trying to develop useful domain name investing advice at my blog LLLL.com where I focus on the 4 letter domain name market. The domain name market has a lot of opportunities but it is also a highly competitive market. Building trust is just one element of the domain name market but I think it is one of the most important.

-Philip O'Neil

 

Does Commuter Traffic Become Domain Type-In Traffic?

I wonder what percentage of commuters notice the domain name references on billboard advertisements and business signs? Of the percentage that do notice, how many actually retain the proper URL and visit the website at a later time or date?

We've all heard of expired domain names and the traffic they can receive from existing links that still point to the domain. But what about type-in traffic from outdated advertising material?

Does this exist at all and if so, is significant type-in traffic generated from outdated billboards, magazines, or even vacant business that didn't remove their signs when they closed shop?

Case in point, the photo (top left) shows a vacant building formerly used by a lending company. The lending company may be gone but the signs are not. Rather impressive signs I might add. Despite closing for some unknown reason, they obviously understood the value of promoting their company and website to the traffic passing by.

What's even more intriguing and not evident from these photos is the fact that this building is located on W150th Street,  less than 100 feet away and in plain view of all traffic on I-71, just south of

Cleveland, Ohio. Between the street and highway, I estimate that at least 250,000 people drive by these signs every day. That’s a conservative guesstimate, it may be significantly higher but I have no documentation to back it up.

Some of these daily commuters are in the market for a mortgage or personal loan which probably increases the likelihood of them noticing these rather distinct signs as they pass by. Perhaps they make a mental note and jump online to check it out as soon as they get home or to the office. I’m sure it happens but how often? That’s what I’d like to know.

Here’s the kicker that may inspire you to try and find out for yourself. At the time of this post, the domain name you see in these photos doesn’t resolve at all. It doesn’t expire until 2011 and appears to be under the control of a web design company which was probably hired by the lending company. I sent out a few emails to the design company and to an individual who I believe was the owner of the lending company. I didn't receive a reply. That was the extent of my attempt to acquire it, mostly due to time constraints.

It seems a shame that this potential traffic, both highly targeted and mortgage related, is being met with a “page cannot be displayed” error. Without setting up a testing period it’s impossible to know how much type in traffic the domain receives and therefore impossible to assign a value to it. If it does receive significant traffic, how valuable would this domain be to another mortgage broker if the current traffic was redirected to their existing site?

There are a lot of unknowns when trying to acquire and monetize a domain like this. You have no control over how long the references to the domain will stay in place. Imagine buying this particular domain and having the building's owner take down the signs the following month.

If anyone follows through with this and acquires this domain, I'd love to hear how it works out for you.

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Domain Flipping Revealed

Earlier this week, Namepros.com member Randomo revealed that he sold exactly 1,700 domains in 2007 mostly through quick turnaround sales (domain flipping). At first glance, 1,700 domain sales would seem to equate to easy profits but a closer look at the numbers reveals that flipping domains is, in fact, hard work.

First off, in order to sell 1,700 domains in a year, one would have to average just under 5 domain sales per day (7 days a week). Flipping 5 domains a day is one thing, getting high sales amounts for all of them is another. Randomo was kind enough to disclose that his average selling price was 3 to 5 times registration cost. This exact amount is open to interpretation but when totaled up, it appears that he was able to generate somewhere between 50k and 70k in revenues through domain flipping. These are my estimates based off the information provided.

To determine profitability we need to factor in the acquisition costs for the 1,700 domains that were sold. Again, the exact figures were not provided but I can safely assume a minimum of 12k if all domains were bought at standard registration fees and perhaps as high as 22k if the average domain acquisition cost was $12.95. Deducting the acquisition costs reveals the domain sales profits to be somewhere between 28k and 58k. This is a very wide range but it should be helpful in determining a worst case and best case earnings scenario.

The last factor we’ll consider when it comes to domain flipping is time. After all, these domains don’t find themselves. Once registered, it also takes time to market and sell them. Receiving payment and transferring domains to a buyer’s account isn’t always the smooth transaction that one would hope for. Randomo estimates that on average, he spends between 3 to 6 hours a day domaining. That comes out to 4.5 hours a day or roughly 1642 hours a year.

Using my guesstimated figures and translating them into an hourly wage, the best case scenario would have Randomo earning approximately $35 dollars an hour for his domain flipping efforts. The worst case scenario would still be pulling in $17 an hour. Either way, I believe the data shows that domain flipping, while profitable, does require work and is not a quick path to easy riches. Having said that, don’t discount the current and future value associated with the list of domain buyers that he has built through his efforts. That’s a valuable asset that’s hard to place a value on.

Many other factors were revealed in the Namepros thread namely, the types of domains sold as well as a list of the locations they were sold at. Visit the domain flipping thread for more details.

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Tips for finding brandable domain names

Not everyone is looking for keyword rich, generic domain names. Many Internet startups are looking for a simple, catchy name or phrase to build their online identity around. Brandable, web 2.0 style domain names have gained popularity in recent years mostly due to the explosion of social-networking sites.

A majority of today’s social-networking sites have catchy, nonsensical domain names. On the surface, it may seem an easy task to create long lists of available web 2.0 domains. In truth, finding an available, yet memorable domain name can be a real chore.

Finding the right brandable domain name requires a lot of creativity and also a bit of luck.

I’ve found the following resources to be of great use when brainstorming for brandables.

1. http://www.dotomator.com

Dotomator.com creates unique domains by combining different categories of word lists to make short, brandable domains. I’ve messed around with many different combinations and found many of the domains to be available. The word lists can also be used outside the dotomator platform to help you create your own terms. Additional inspiration for brandable domain names can be found using ther web 2.0 domain generator. The tool creates names one at a time and adds them to a column on the right side. These names can be used as is, if available, or further altered by changing key letters within the names to come up with completely new terms.

2. http://www.makewords.com

Makewords.com is another domain name generator which uses a very sophisticated interface that delivers surprisingly good results. In addition to brandable domains, Makewords.com can create hundreds of keyword rich names using a user supplied word and combining it with a number of keyword theme categories. They’ve also created a new domain search tool at http://www.randomainer.com which looks promising but I haven’t had a chance to give it a full test drive yet.

3. http://www.hackslash.net

This is a straightforward web 2.0 domain name generator that presents the user with 15 terms at a time. There are no user input variables and many of the terms include numerals. The main advantage of this tool is the speed in which it generates the names. Click the “make more” button and you’re instantly presented with 15 more names. Click it long enough and you’ll find plenty of catchy, memorable names. The disadvantage is that you’ll have to copy the terms you like into notepad and check them for availability at another site.

Hopefully these resources come in handy the next time you're looking for that perfect web 2.0 style brandable domain name.

 

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